Cellulose forms the basic structural component of plant cell walls where it exists in the form of cellulose fibres. The use of cellulose extracted from plant material attracts interest because, generally, the cellulose has good strength, stiffness, biodegradability and renewability properties. It is known to reinforce materials such as plastics materials and epoxy resins, with coarse plant fibres from hemp and flax, for example. It is known to use chemically modified cellulose, such as hydroxyethyl cellulose, to increase the viscosity of an aqueous medium such as an emulsion.
However, the production of such chemically modified cellulose is energy intensive, involving a number of treatment steps.
Cellulose fibres can be broken down to the substructures of microfibrils and nanofibrils. The use of these highly purified cellulose substructures as additives for modifying the physical properties of dispersions for various uses has attracted interest in recent years. In particular, it is known that some microfibrilar and nanofibrilar cellulose compositions can have a high viscosity in water. Such high viscosity compositions could be useful as viscosity modifiers, for instance in drilling muds. For instance U.S. Pat. No. 5,964,983, EP-A-0134084, U.S. Pat. No. 5,179,076, and WO-A-2014017911 disclose drilling fluid compositions comprising cellulose based particles. However, these fluids tend to show stability issues, and are also not showing any filter cake formation characteristics. Similarly in other applications such as paints or composites, the coagulation is undesired, since it may render the compositions unsuitable for application.
The present invention seeks to provide a new compositions comprising producing cellulose-containing material from plant matter which alleviates one or more of the above problems, and uses for same.